Aftermath
by aehawthorne
Summary: The moments of terror, then panic, then finally relief that Felicity experiences following Emiko dropping a building on Oliver and the team.


It had been too long without an answer. Far too long.

"John, please tell me you have eyes on Oliver," Felicity said desperately, switching over to his channel.

"I wish I could," John replied grimly. "The last I saw of him he was chasing after Emiko."

"Damn it!" Felicity cried, leaping up from her chair. She paced in a circle, then sat back down. At a loss as to what else to do, she tried Oliver's channel again.

"Oliver, please come in," she said. She knew, deep down, that the likelihood of getting a response hadn't changed in the last few minutes, but she had to _try_. "_Please._" She was met with silence.

"Oliver, _please_," she begged, trying again. "Say something. _Anything_. I just need to hear your voice. I just need to know that you're alive." Still no response. Felicity kept the channel open, continuing her litany of pleading, repeating the same requests over and over, hoping against hope for any kind of response. After a while, she no longer knew if she was begging Oliver for an answer or the universe to let him live, to not take him away from her, not now. Not yet.

The more time passed without a response, with nothing to hear but her own voice echoing in her ears, the deeper Felicity slipped into despair.

_Is this how Oliver felt after Chase set off those bombs? _she thought. She remembered the aftermath of that moment, remembered the crackle of static in her ear as Oliver tried to get a signal through, the relief in his voice when he finally did.

That memory nearly broke her. She slumped forward, pressed her forehead against the edge of the table in front of her, and whispered one last desperate plea. "Come on honey, don't do this to me." There was an agonizing silence, then a gasp like a freediver coming up for air and Oliver's voice, strained and faint but still audible. "Felicity?"

"Oh thank God," Felicity breathed, falling back in her chair, feeling relief flood through her. "You're okay. You weren't answering your comm, and I thought- I thought-" Her breath started coming in rapid gasps. Panic attacks were a relatively recent addition to the list of things she had to deal with, but she was familiar enough with them to recognize when one was coming on.

"Felicity, breathe," Oliver said, recognizing what was happening in the same moment she did. "It's alright. I'm alright." His voice was stronger now, louder, and it cut through the panic building inside of Felicity like a knife. There was a pause while she got her breathing back under control, then Oliver added, apparently as an afterthought, "Well, 'alright' might be a relative term." Felicity took a few more minutes to regain her composure before she asked "What happened?"

"Emiko dropped the building on top of us," Oliver replied. "I think I took the brunt of it because I ended up being the closest to the detonation. I was chasing after her and I ended up running right into her trap." There was a beat where Oliver waited to see if Felicity was going to respond. She didn't, because the only words she had right now were to rage at him for being so reckless and running off without confirming his location, and that had to wait. Right now, it was more important that she know what had happened.

"Right before she set off the explosives," Oliver went on, "Emiko said that she's the one responsible for the missing security footage from the subway. But she saved it, and she's made sure that everyone will know what really happened."

"We'll deal with that later," Felicity said, putting it off. Right now the only thing she wanted to focus on was the fact that Oliver was alive and- for the moment, at least- okay. To the end of making sure he _stayed_ that way, she said, "I'm going to try and pick up a signal from your tracker and lead the team to you. _Don't. Move_." There was a rustling on the other end, a grinding sound like gravel shifting, and Oliver replied, "I don't think that'll be a problem." Felicity grimaced at the reminder of how perilous the situation was.

"Next time, don't go running off without confirming your location first," she said, the opportunity to say what she'd wanted to earlier finally presenting itself. "I can't- I can't go through that again."

"I'm sorry," Oliver replied, pain in his voice like he was hurting for making her hurt. "I just got so focused on what I was doing… I promise, it won't happen again."

"Good," Felicity said, her voice coming out in a breathless whisper, before she shut off the communication link between them and got to work.

It was a good few hours before the team managed to work themselves free of the rubble and start to make their way back to the bunker. The last thing Felicity had heard from them, before they'd cut off communication, was that they'd managed to free Oliver from the two slabs of concrete they'd found him trapped between, which had made her breathe a sigh of relief.

The moment Felicity heard the elevator, she turned her chair and took stock of each member of the team as they came in, doing a mental roll call- Dinah first, sporting no more than some superficial wounds, followed by Rene, then Roy, both of whom also looked relatively unharmed, and then finally Oliver, bringing up the rear, leaning heavily on John. Felicity leapt up from her chair at the sight of him. Even if he hadn't told her that he'd taken the brunt of the building's collapse, she would have known it just by looking at him, and it reminded her of just how close they'd come to disaster.

Felicity was barely aware of her feet beneath her as she ran toward Oliver, shoving John aside and throwing her arms around him, colliding with him hard enough to knock him backwards a step. He grunted when she slammed into him, frozen with shock from the impact for a moment before he returned the embrace, pulling her close to him. Felicity clung to Oliver, her hands curled around fistfuls of his jacket, breathing him in.

"I thought I'd lost you," she whispered, tears in her eyes, her voice muffled by Oliver's shoulder.

"You're not going to lose me," he promised in an equally quiet voice. "Not ever."


End file.
